The Price of War
by Tired Lyre
Summary: Shepard and Samantha Traynor share one last night together before the final battle of the Reaper War. Oneshot. Fluff. No explicit content.


The stars passing rapidly above the bed were the only sign that the ship was moving at all. Try as she might, Shepard couldn't hear the _Normandy_'s engines. It was, after all, quite possibly the most well-built ship in the galaxy. She remembered what Tali had said three years ago about not being able to sleep in the silence of the _Normandy_; now she knew.

There was an eternity outside her window. A countless number of stars. Who was she, compared to that? And yet, every living being in that galaxy was depending on her.

Shepard knew that she should have been asleep. She knew that she would need every possible ounce of strength she could get for whatever she would have to face tomorrow. For Earth. But sleep refused to come to her. She wondered bitterly for a moment if it really even mattered. If she was about to die anyway, what was a few lost hours of sleep?

A pang of fear ran through Shepard as she realized what she had just admitted, that she could very well die on Earth. Even more disturbing was the fact that she was scared; not for the war, and not for the galaxy, but for herself. Death. She had eluded it her whole life. She had even been dead before. But not until now had the thought of dying ever frightened her. She'd never had anything to lose. Now, she had everything to lose.

The experienced marine knew that she shouldn't have been expecting herself to die. That was no way to go into the battle that would determine the future of all sentient life as it existed, especially not with what she'd been telling everybody else over the course of the war to keep morale up. But she couldn't help it.

Shepard cursed the silence of the ship's engines again. The room was almost completely quiet, save for a few sounds. Shepard closed her eyes and listened to Samantha sleep. The short inhale, the slightly longer exhale; both shallow in the lack of any conscious effort to control them. The light rustle of the sheets every time she shifted her feet. The faint brush of her cheek against Shepard's shoulder. All barely there, perceptible only in the lack of any other noise. Sounds that weren't even really sounds. To Shepard, they were louder than anything. She wanted to wish that the cabin were silent instead; it would have been easier for them both, but she couldn't.

She kept her eyes closed. A deep ache spread from her chest, through the back of her throat, to her eyes. One tear escaped past its weak barriers and slid down the side of her head. She felt it lingering on her ear the same way Samantha's words had that same morning.

"_Good, because I wasn't really kidding. I want a big house, white picket fence and a dog, some kind of retriever. I'm thinking two kids, but— Are you... writing this down?"_

_ "I'll remember."_

_ "You damn well better." A pause. "Whatever happens, I love you."_

A rustle, louder than the others, sounded. Shepard felt the bed shift as Samantha lifted her head. She kept her eyes shut.

"Shepard?" Her voice was only a whisper. It might as well have been a Reaper's siren. Shepard didn't respond, afraid of what she might say. She wished again that she had the willpower to want the silence to come back, but it was beyond even her. What she really wanted was to be able to hear that voice forever. Shepard hated herself for being so selfish.

An agonizingly gentle touch traced the path that Shepard's tear had taken. She suppressed a shiver. It didn't burn the way she had half-expected it to. She wished that she wished it would. The touch stopped, resting in the same place the tear had. She crumbled.

"I'm sorry," Shepard said in a shaky whisper. Her voice cracked on the third syllable. "I love you. I'm so sorry."

The touch disappeared. Shepard longed to be glad, but she could only long for it to be back.

A warm caress on her cheek. Shepard's chest ached again. Dampness built up behind her eyelids, this time forcing its way out at once. She hadn't cried for sixteen years.

She opened her eyes. Her vision filled with blurred shapes, softened by her tears. Shepard's gaze gravitated to Samantha's silhouette leaning toward her. "I'm sorry," she repeated. She didn't know what else to say.

The other woman's form lowered to Shepard's face. She paused for a moment before delicately kissing Shepard. It wasn't until the moment before their faces met that Shepard noticed that Samantha's eyes were glistening with tears too. The commander's eyes drifted shut again, and she returned the kiss. Guilt overwhelmed her, but she couldn't bring herself to stop.

After several moments, they broke away. Samantha returned to her earlier position beside Shepard. "What's wrong?" she asked gently. Shepard drew her closer, hating herself.

"I love you," she murmured.

Samantha looked at Shepard and smiled faintly. "Is that so wrong?"

Yes, it was wrong; it was wrong for Shepard to rely on Samantha this way; wrong that she had roped Samantha into this when her death was practically hanging over her head at every moment, but it was too late now. Whatever she did, whatever she said, would end up hurting Samantha somehow. Shepard shifted and buried her face in the other woman's neck. It was warm, comforting. Shepard didn't deserve that. Samantha didn't deserve this.

Samantha tried to roll onto her side to face Shepard, but Shepard clung to her more tightly, pinning Samantha down and pressing her face deeper into her neck. "It's okay," Samantha coaxed. "We've made it this far. You have the best track record of anyone I know for saving the galaxy. You're going to do this."

Shepard shook her head. She knew that. She knew that she would have to do this, whether she wanted to or not; that she would have to win the war, whatever it took; that if she had to make a choice, she would have to choose the galaxy over anything else, over everything else. She didn't want that choice.

"What about you?" Her fear voiced itself in spite of her efforts to keep it in her own mind, where it could hurt only one person; herself. How had this happened, that now she was the one who needed Samantha's confidence? How was she supposed to save the galaxy, if she couldn't even manage on her own anymore? She remembered when she had been the only one to have to shoulder her troubles, when Samantha had only been Specialist Traynor. If only Shepard had been strong enough to keep it that way; but that wasn't what she wanted, not really.

"What about me?" Samantha asked.

"You—" Shepard struggled for the right words to embody what the comm specialist had become for her; the right words to express how much she wanted to, but couldn't, regret what it had cost Samantha. The words didn't come. "You're losing sleep," she stated lamely. There was another thing to add to the list.

"I'm not the one who has to go face to face with a Reaper tomorrow." Samantha tried to laugh, but the truth of her words were too frightening. Shepard's hold finally loosened just enough so that Samantha could turn to face her.

Now they both had their arms wrapped tightly around each other in an attempt to draw themselves even closer together. The widest gap between them was the few centimeters between their faces. Shepard noticed that Samantha had also had tear tracks now. That, she regretted without question.

The two simply watched each other silently, their noses almost, but not quite, touching. Shepard found herself lost in the soft, dark hues of Samantha's eyes, even when she couldn't see them anymore through the stinging of her own.

Samantha relaxed into Shepard's embrace. Neither of them let go of the other, though, with the unspoken fear remaining between them that this could be their last chance to hold each other. Shepard brought her hand up behind her lover's head, running her fingers through her soft hair guiltily. Every vulnerable moment like this; every touch, every whisper, would only open the wound inflicted on Samantha if Shepard died.

"I don't regret you," Samantha said suddenly, as if she had read Shepard's mind. She shifted slightly. Shepard could feel her breath running down the front of her neck.

"I'm sorry," Shepard echoed her earlier words.

"You have nothing to be sorry for." Samantha paused. "Don't you think I want you too? I'm not just here because you saved the galaxy twice, you know. I love you," she added softly. "Whatever happens, I'd do it all again."

"I just—" Shepard hesitated, unsure of what she wanted to say. "If anything happens to me— If I have to— I can't—" She sighed. "I'm sorry."

"It's okay, Shepard." Samantha's fingers lightly traced down the length of Shepard's arm and found her hand, grasping it loosely. "You have everybody else in the galaxy counting on you. Don't worry about me."

Shepard ran her thumb up and down the back of Samantha's. There was still the dark cloud of the war hanging over her head, but it was a little clearer now. "I'm going to fight like hell to get back," she said in an undertone. She brushed her lips across the top of Samantha's head and closed her eyes.

"I know you will," Samantha whispered. "I know you will."


End file.
